Company: Enigma.io

Open data content and discovery platform Enigma today has announced investor funding of $4.5 million to propel the start-up's next phase of growth. Key to Enigma's early success has been a heavy focus on data cleaning and a customer on-boarding strategy that has targeted just a handful of industry sectors. The next phase will see the development of "more scoped APIs" and a broader targeting of enterprise customers, according to Marc DaCosta, cofounder of Enigma, who spoke with ProgrammableWeb in the lead-up to today's announcement.

A book about open data, to be released in January—and the launch of a pilot website showcasing open data businesses—both forecast a big year for open data in 2014, and highlight the importance of APIs in powering this new wave of innovation. ProgrammableWeb spoke with Joel Gurin, author of Open Data Now, and reviewed some of the businesses that make up the preliminary Open Data 500 list.